West Berkshire Recycling Centres to open

West
Berkshire Council’s Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) are set to reopen
to allow residents the opportunity to dispose of waste and recycling that
cannot be safely stored at home. This follows publication by the government of
updated guidance indicating that visits to recycling centres can be considered
essential under certain conditions.

From Thursday 14 May both
of our recycling centres, which are located at Newtown Road in Newbury and Padworth
Lane, near Aldermaston, will be reopened. The sites were closed temporarily on
24 March following announcements by the government of lockdown restrictions. In
order to manage demand, a booking
system is in place and you will not be able to simply turn up
at the recycling centres.

When the
recycling centres reopen, and to stay within the government’s Covid-19
guidelines on essential travel, please remember that journeys to these sites
during lockdown should only be made if waste cannot be stored any longer at
home without causing a risk to your health and safety. The sites will be open
seven days a week from 9:00am to 6:00pm, with the last booking appointment
available at 4:30pm.

Working
with Veolia, who are our waste contractors, precautionary measures will be
introduced to help maintain social distancing on our sites for our residents
and staff protection. We will also implement a robust traffic management plan
which will help us minimise impacts of traffic congestion on the local road
network and to control the number of visitors to the site at any one time.

Residents
need to book an appointment and be prepared for the possibility of long queues.
We are advising delaying a visit until things are a bit quieter in a few weeks’
time or to only visit if you cannot safely store waste at home for the next
couple of weeks. Our kerbside waste collections for recycling, rubbish, the
garden and food waste subscription scheme and chargeable kerbside bulky waste
collection service is still operating normally and residents are advised to
make use of them, wherever practicable, in the meantime.

Making your visit run smoothly

The
experience of visiting our household recycling centres will be different and
you should only visit the recycling centres if you cannot safely store your
waste at home.

Check
travel times and any restrictions in
place. Please arrive at your allocated time that you have booked online
and not any earlier. There may be delays accessing the site and possibly
queues of waiting vehicles. Please bear with us as we work safely on the
site to limit contact between people.

Have
your permit, or ID and proof of West Berkshire address with you.

Have
a copy of your booking confirmation with you – either a print out or on
your phone.

Only
bring what you can physically carry as we are operating a one person per
car restriction – our staff cannot help with your waste when you are
unloading your vehicle. Under exceptional circumstances only, and at the
sole discretion of site staff, two people may be allowed to leave the
vehicle to dispose of the waste e.g. if they are removing a heavy or bulky
waste item.

Please
follow the instructions that site staff will give you and also be polite
to members of staff.

All
residents visiting the site will need to observe the social distancing
measures in place by keeping at least 2 metres apart at all times.

In
line with Public Health England guidance, residents who are vulnerable, or
who are showing symptoms which may indicate coronavirus, should not visit
household recycling centres.

5 Comments

Check list 1. Make it as inconvenient as possible to dispose of the waste that the council has a legal responsibilty to deal with.
2. Claim that it is now so dangerous to drive to the tip it has to be planned like a military operation.
3. Convince people it’s for their own benefit.
4. Make it implicit that the poor dears that work there are risking their lives to take you rubbish.
Tick on every item, well done council.
The truth is somewhat different. You’re more likely to crash your car from lack of practice driving the thing than catch the cold virus. Of course if you do crash your car and kill yourself you will be added to the Covid 19 death toll irrespective of whether you have it.

I also see that Bracknell and Reading are to open with similar restrictions next week as well.

Not before time, cannot really understand why they ever closed, its all out in the open, and close contact not needed with workers at all when using a little bit of common sense.

Given most people who have been at home over the last 7 weeks have a garden, and plenty of time on their hands to do odd jobs in and around the house, a huge amount of garden waste and DIY materials has built up, and it will take very many weeks before the backlog has even started to be cleared, let alone getting back to normal.

We will now have lengthy queues for weeks if capacity and hours of opening are restricted. I wonder how long it will be before residents will receive a letter from the Council saying you are using the facility too often. ?

I have noticed a big increase in fly tipping recently; presumably a result of “recycling centres” being closed. My experience of the local one suggests that it would rather easy to have imposed some distancing rules, albeit with a queuing facility for incoming vehicles. Presumably a lengthy queue would then encourage people to try at a different time.

I wonder if those who implemented the closures will now clear up that fly tipping?

Got onto the website when it opened at 10.00 this morning, after completing all details by 10.02 then got the wheel of death waiting for an appointment only to be told at 10.05 that no dates left, try again tomorrow, it would seem releasing appointments one day at a time.

What an absolute bloody farce.

Why am I not surprised, close an amenity that is well used, when with some simple thought it need not have been closed at all, then after 7 weeks introduce a system that clearly will never even take up part of the backlog, let alone current demand.

I guess fly tipping by those who simply have no place to store rubbish will continue to grow.

You would have thought that the sensible thing to do would be put the available dates up first, to make a choice out of those available, rather than go through all the nonsense of having to complete a forms and registration first, before finding out nothing is available.

Why am I not surprised, it is the local Council after all and they do not have much of a reputation for applying common sense very often.

So Frustrating.

Drinks in a brewery come to mind.

About John Redwood

John Redwood won a free place at Kent College, Canterbury, and graduated from Magdalen College Oxford. He is a Distinguished fellow of All Souls, Oxford. A businessman by background, he has set up an investment management business, was both executive and non executive chairman of a quoted industrial PLC, and chaired a manufacturing company with factories in Birmingham, Chicago, India and China. He is the MP for Wokingham, first elected in 1987.